Grieving
by LauraHuntORI
Summary: Chapter One: Tom grieves for his wife. Chapter Two: Tom grieves for his brother-in-law. Chapter Three: Contains several memories.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** I apologize for this, but the need was too great. This story is set on the night of Mrs. Tom Branson/Lady Sybil's death, Season 3, episode 4 U.S. numbering, episode 5 U.K. number.

**Disclaimer: **I'm not even a custodian, my dears, let alone an owner. These characters and their settings are the work of others. I hope I do not offend with my homage.

* * *

"Anna," Alfred asked, "What's up in the tower?"

"The big tower?"

Alfred nodded.

"Nothing," she said. "It used to be used as a maid's dormitory, but it's been vacant for years, because—why are you asking about the tower tonight of all nights?"

"Mr. Branson asked me," Alfred explained, "when we were putting him to bed. I told him I didn't know, but that I didn't think anyone ever went up there."

Anna nodded and went about her business, but when she came wide awake in the middle of the night, she knew she would have to check.

The head housemaid put on a robe over her nightgown, and went first to check Lady Sybil's room. Lady Sybil was there, laid out peacefully on the bed, alone. Miss O'Brien must have finally coaxed her ladyship to bed. Mr. Branson was not there. Anna hated to leave Lady Sybil unattended, but Anna was a practical girl and her concern had to be for the living. She crept next to the night nursery. The baby slept peacefully, attended by an equally sleeping junior maid, who had qualified for the post of emergency nursemaid by dint of the possession of a large number of younger siblings. No Mr. Branson in the nursery.

With some trepidation, Anna continued her round by going to the room they had made up for the newly widowed Mr. Branson. She listened at the closed door. Total silence greeted her stretched ears, but she knew she had to check. Anna eased the door open. The room was empty. Mr. Branson had been here though; the bedclothes were rumpled.

The tower it was, then.

Anna crossed the huge house as silently as possible and began to ascend the tower stairs. As she neared the top floor, she could hear it: if the tower had had a reputation for being haunted, the eerie wailing drifting down from above would have justified it, but Anna knew it was no ghost making the unearthly sound. This was a living man, whose dead woman lay below.

At the top of the stairs there was a door: Anna opened it. She had found her quarry. Mr. Branson, barefoot in a short-sleeved Henley and blue and white striped pajama bottoms, sat on the dusty floor of the long abandoned and grimly Spartan maid's bedroom. His head was down on his raised knees, his arms wrapped tightly around them, pressing them up to his chest. One finger bore a slender metal ring, from which a short string of green beads ran into his clenched palm. He rocked very slightly back and forth, emitting a wordless wailing that slid up and down the most melancholy minor scale she had ever heard.

Mr. Branson raised his head from his knees to looked up at her and asked, "A ghrá, cén fáth go raibh tú saoire dom?" He drew in a ragged breath, and let it out in another wail of strangely chromatic despair. The blue eyes filled with tears that overflowed onto cheeks that were already streaked with them. Looking at him, Anna felt again the agony of Mr. Bates' death sentence, worse here in that Lady Sybil would not be reprieved. She wondered if Mr. Branson even recognized her.

"Mr. Branson?" she asked.

He blinked. His voice, when he spoke again, was that of a very tiny child, bewildered by bereavement. "Anna, why did she leave me?"

Anna's own eyes overflowed then, and she sank to her knees next to him, and rubbed one tense arm. "She didn't want to, Mr. Branson."

His tears flowed freely. He took another breath. _"A ghrá, cén fáth go raibh tú saoire dom?" _came out this time as a whisper, then a deep breath in, a sobbing gasp out, ending with another spasm that tore out of him in a renewed heartrending wail, "**_A ghrá_**, cén fáth go raibh tú saoire dom?"

Anna thought he would be ill if this continued. "Please come back downstairs, Mr. Branson," she begged. Her comforting hand continued to rub his arm. He was still looking at her, but his arms still gripped his drawn up knees, as though this posture were the only one he could maintain without coming apart.

He sobbed a moment, but was clearly trying to pull himself together enough to speak. "Anna," he finally gasped. "Please—Anna, I need to grieve… please, let me—" the sentence ended in a wail that sounded like it had been pulled involuntarily from the core of his being. He breathed heavily, gazing at her hopelessly, begging without further ability to even string his plea together.

Suddenly, Anna understood. Once he went downstairs, he would have to stifle this grief and contain it, no matter how desperately he needed to let it out. He would be sick if he _didn't _continue. And the Crawleys would be unable to bear this kind of grieving, let alone understand it.

Mr. Branson dragged in another breath. "I promise I'll come downstairs before daylight, Anna." The streaming eyes entreated her understanding.

Anna nodded. "Should I leave you?" she asked, uncertainly.

Mr. Branson nodded.

Anna rose to leave, and Mr. Branson lowered his head back down onto his knees. As Anna closed the door behind her, the wailing recommenced, a spine tingling glissade of sound, ending, _"A ghrá, cén fáth go raibh tú saoire dom?"_

* * *

In the morning, Anna rose and began to check on her charges. She entered Lady Sybil's room to find the widower fully dressed sitting vigil by the body.

Mr. Branson's eyes met hers. While his eyes were still filled with misery as well as a totally despairing sorrow, they were dry. He looked at her silently for a long moment, then finally said, "Thank you."


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: **"The wailing of the newborn infant is mingled with the dirge for the dead." ~~ Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus), ( 96 BC - 55 BC) || I never thought I would say this, but I must: when I wrote chapter one, I genuinely believed the story was complete. But it wasn't, was it?

**Disclaimer: ** I'm not even a custodian, my dears, let alone an owner. These characters and their settings are the work of others. I hope I do not offend with my homage.

* * *

Tom sang a song that had no words because none were needed. In the day just past, he had suppressed his song, his throat stilled because his love for his adopted family bound him to silence, his urge to mourn held in check because he knew the one thing that would ease his grief would augment theirs, though the song rose repeatedly into his gorge almost beyond bearing until he thought he would choke. Now the great house was silent, the other mourners asleep, and Tom, wakeful, was free to ascend in the darkness to the place of mourning to sing his grief.

His companion, his protector, his brother-of-the-heart, his faithful friend was no more.

Raindrops fell on Tom's face, their taste the salt of tears. The men who had dared to take on the Crawley sisters could no longer stick together. Death had parted them with his scythe, so that never again would they pool their resources, dream their dreams, nor plan their plans. From this day, they would neither help nor aid each other. There was to be no more friendship, no more guidance, no more love. All were in the grave.

Fine. Tom accepted it. And if it was good enough for Matthew, Tom would be there, too. '_I should let him know,'_ Tom thought. "A Mhathúin [_Matthew_]," Tom called to his friend, his voice only a whisper, "Táim sínte ar do thuama. [_I am stretched on your grave_.]"

'_Was Matthew there?'_ Tom could hear no answer. He sighed, letting out a gusty breath. He licked tears from his lips, only to feel more crowding to take their place. No, his friend was not there. Matthew had gone. Tom took a deep breath to make his call louder this time: "A Mhathúin, cén fáth go raibh tú a fhágáil linn? [_Matthew, why did you leave us?_]"

The only answer was the mournful sound of Tom's own song, his grief beyond expression, which he yet strove (however inadequately) to express, an outpouring of tears, of wailing, of music. He listened: the notes were sweet in his ears, the sound of the mythical thornbird impaled, a death song filled with love, a lament whose notes were liquid as tears. His breath caught, then released, in spasms like crying. He was crying, he supposed: it didn't matter, he didn't know. Tom only yearned for his friend, for his brother, wished for his nearness once more, he longed for him, with agony, with hopelessness, with despair that stretched from the highest note he could reach, down each half-step of the scale to the lowest tone his devastated diaphragm could produce, his chest heaved with the effort, his lips and throat working to shape each vocalization, ornamenting the song with his love, with his best, with the purest sound that was in him, for this man who had made him feel so wanted, so needed, so loved—and somehow not alone in this land that had been his wife's, but was not really his own, no matter how much he loved these people, for he was so lonely here now… without Matthew. Now his words came in a mournful wail: "A Mhathúin, cén fáth go raibh tú saoire dom? [_Matthew, why did you leave me?_]

Tom's head ached fiercely. His breath came only in gasps. He tried to think. What would Matthew find enticing? "A dheartháir, is é do mhac nuabheirthe caoineadh ar do shon_. [Brother, your newborn son is crying for you.]" _

Tom dragged in a breath to try again, louder_, "_Tá do bhean chéile ag caoineadh ar do shon. [_Your wife is crying for you_.]"

He couldn't keep it up: his next sentence came out in a guttural whisper, torn almost involuntarily from a throat swollen and inflamed with its truth: "Tá mé ag caoineadh ar do shon. [_I am crying for you_.]"

Tom paused to sob a moment and found he was angry. "Nach raibh grá againn tú? [_Did we not love you?_]"

He loosed an ululating cry, "Ní fhéadfaí tú a bheith sásta? [_Could you not be happy?_]"

Tom's voice moved in pitch from low, to high, then back, from soft, to as loud as he could make it, slower, then faster, then louder, until finally his voice broke, his wail itself dying into soft, wet, hopeless sobs, helpless against implacable fate, against loss, against death. His throat was as raw as his heart when he finally whispered in defeat, "Cén fáth go raibh tú bás? [_Why did you die?_]"

His eyes were closed; there was nothing he wanted to see except Matthew, whom he would never see again. He was not silent, he was making a kind of humming sound, his song and his cries had rendered him hoarse, each sound he made now brought him pain, but it was good, he was glad of it, he welcomed the pain, because it was from Matthew, who would never again give him anything but this. He wanted to lose his voice entirely: he wanted to be rendered permanently mute, with his last sounds his grief for his friend.

Despite the distance in nationality, in social class, in worldview, in everything that separated him from his family in the dark house below, he knew he spoke for them all when, after several fortifying breaths, he at last pushed past the fiery agony that was his throat to scream, "A Mhathúin, cén fáth go raibh tú a fhágáil linn? [_Matthew, why did you leave us?_]"

The sound of his voice lingered in the air as long as the pain of it lingered in his throat. Tom wept brokenly. He was so alone. He would always be alone. Everyone he loved would leave him, would embrace death itself rather than stay to keep him company.

_Except, he wasn't alone. _

Tom was seated in a straight backed chair that was placed next to the empty bed in the long abandoned maid's bedroom up on the top floor of the main tower. Someone (who could only be Anna) had cleaned the room, and made up the bed. He had no idea how she found the time to do it, but was more grateful than he could ever have expressed for the kindness of her thought, her knowledge that he would come up here tonight, even if he had to do it alone….he wasn't alone, though, was he? _Someone _was here. Maybe Anna had ventured up here to check on him, as she had done with… _Sybil._ His brain immediately shied away from the thought of his wife. If he thought about her, he would never be able to make himself go downstairs again when daylight approached, and he knew he must do that, he could not stay up here forever.

Tom kept his eyes closed. He had tilted the chair back so it was balanced on its two back legs. He wouldn't fall, because his head leaned against the wall and kept the chair upright, even though he was rocking it very slightly back and forth. He waited patiently for the other occupant(s) of the room to speak, but they didn't, seemingly content to listing to his humming, his soft sobs, his wails of despair. He let another spasm take him, ornamented it as well as he was able, though his voice was no better than a croak now, and it was painful to try shape the sound, it hurt to make it at all. He was sorry to put Anna through this again, he knew it bothered her, but she must have known what she'd find if she came up here… she had seen and heard him _before. _

Tom sighed. He owed it to Anna to let her know he was all right. If this counted as 'all right.' He opened his eyes.

It was not Anna.

At least, it sort of was, but clearly…_wasn't_. Tom's eyes stung from his tears. He blinked to clear his blurred vision, but it did not want to clear. The Blessed Virgin, improbably accompanied by the Irish goddess Aíne, stood looking at him, surrounded by faint halos of moonlight.

Tom was touched to see that the Blessed Ladies had thoughtfully taken on human guise for his benefit, presumably to keep him from being afraid, so they bore the appearance of his sister-in-law and his friend. Tom smiled at the ladies in gratitude, and was even moved to gentle teasing, to pretend he thought they actually were who they appeared to be, though he continued to lean back against the wall; it seemed unnecessary to rise for a vision, and the ladies must know he was utterly prone in spirit. He queried softly, "A Mháire, a Aíne_, _d'fhéadfaí tú a chloisteáil dom ó thíos staighre? [_Mary, Anna, could you hear me from downstairs?_]"

The Blessed Virgin did not reply, but turned to the goddess Aíne, with a look that seemed almost helpless. The goddess appeared untroubled, seemingly she knew her own countryman too well to be fooled. Aíne told him to speak English.

Tom was genuinely amused. Surely the Blessed Virgin could understand him, no matter what language he used, and why was an Irish goddess telling him to speak English? He smiled at them. "Ba chóir an fáth liom labhairt Béarla? [_Why should I speak English?_]" he asked.

His disobedience displeased the goddess. She actually stamped her slippered foot angrily. "Mr. Branson!" Aíne exclaimed, "We can't understand you unless you speak English! It's Lady Mary and Anna!"

For a moment longer, Tom just stared at them. He blinked several times. Then, to the relief of the two women, the front legs of his chair banged to the floor, and he had risen to his feet. He was back with them. "Mary, Anna, could you hear me from downstairs?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note: **Really, there's no need to be afraid of this story. Dying is a natural part of living. We couldn't know happiness if we didn't also know grief.

**Disclaimer: **I'm not even a custodian, my dears, let alone an owner. These characters and their settings are the work of others. I hope I do not offend with my homage.

* * *

"No, Tom," Mary assured her brother-in-law, "we couldn't hear you at all until we were very close: not until we got to the second turn of the tower stairs."

Tom nodded and relaxed. That was well above the inhabited floors. Tom's brow creased. "If you couldn't hear me, then why—"

"I was worried," Mary told him. "I was in the nursery and wondered how you were getting on, but when I went to see, you weren't in your room. Anna said you'd be here."

"You were checking on me?" he asked expressionlessly.

"Yes," she said. "I knew you'd be upset."

Tom blinked several times, but said nothing. _'She knew __**he'd**__ be upset?' _How did the Crawleys do it? Were they made of marble? A wave of grief washed over the Irishman, so intense it was all he could do not to start wailing again. No wonder he had mistaken her for the Blessed Virgin, she was like a statue in alabaster, nearly translucent in the moonlight, an artist's exquisite rendering of the_ mater misericordiae_, a compassionate smile on cold lifeless lips, not a flesh and blood woman. Had she loved Matthew _at all_?

Suddenly, he remembered the day Matthew had been brought to the hospital wounded.

_Tom had driven Lady Mary to the hospital so as to be there when Mr. Matthew arrived, and the chauffeur was so frustrated at his inability to read any emotion in her calm politeness on the trip that he had asked Lady Sybil if her sister were still in love with Mr. Matthew. Lady Sybil had refused to say. _

_'You're good at hiding your feelings, all of you,' Tom had told the woman he loved. 'Much better than we are.' _

_'Maybe,' she'd replied, her anger at least, not especially hidden, 'but don't make the mistake of thinking we don't __**have**__ feelings.'_

But he was making that mistake still, wasn't he? He asked, "How are the children?"

"Better than we are," she admitted.

Tom was surprised into a painful chuckle. "I don't doubt it… Why was it you wanted to see me?"

"Just to make sure you're all right. Are you?"

* * *

_'Tom, are you all right?' Sybil asked. The letters lay between them on the settee. Lady Grantham apologizing that she and her husband and mother-in-law were still to 'ill' to travel to Dublin for the wedding. It was the first the couple had heard that Lord or old Lady Grantham had been ill, __**if**__ they had been. Sybil and Tom were put in the awkward position of having to choose whether to hope Sybil's father and grandmother __**had **__been ill, or else to hope her mother was a liar, and that they would have to face the truth that when Lord Grantham had told them he was giving them his 'blessing' to take with them it hadn't, in fact, meant anything. _

_Sybil did not seem upset. She acted like she believed her mother's tale of illness, so Tom tried hard to believe it, too. Then they'd opened Edith's letter, to be regaled with an account of the __**actual **__remarks of the various individuals on the subject of whether they were or were not willing lend countenance to the marriage by attending the ceremony. Edith was merciless in her verbatim detail. _

_Sybil had maintained a proper British 'stiff upper lip.' If Papa chose not to attend their wedding, that was __**his **__affair. His daughter would not be the one to cry over it. Instead, it was Tom who wept, while Sybil cuddled him close, kissed his soft brown hair, and murmured soothingly (in that husky, sweetened-whiskey voice he would never hear again) that everything was all right._

* * *

"Here, milady, give him this."

Anna had pulled a pewter flask from her pocket and handed to Lady Mary, who passed it to Tom. Tom was not convinced he wanted to know why Anna had such a thing.

The ladies maid saw the agent's look. "Mr. Bates said he thought you might want it if I happened to see you tonight."

Tom raised an eyebrow. "You didn't leave it up here, though." His voice truly did sound hoarse.

Anna chuckled. "He didn't give it to me until well after I'd fixed up the room. I didn't get a chance to come up here again."

Tom nodded. He unscrewed the cap and took a pull from it. He rolled the liquor on his tongue. It was Irish whiskey, the light, crisp, clean bite of it untainted by peat smoke. It burned his sore throat in a way that was a relief to him. "Thank Christ for Mr. Bates." Strangely, the remark sounded less like blasphemy than simple gratitude, very baldly stated.

Tom tried to hand the flask back to Anna. She waved it away. "Keep it," she told him. He met her eyes, then took another pull from the flask, and involuntarily his mind reverted to another time someone had handed him a flask, but that time it had been the heavy peat-smoky taste of Scotch whisky on his tongue.

* * *

_"Branson, are you all right?" _

_Branson had been driving Lord Grantham home from a luncheon visit to a friend in Richmond, North Yorkshire. As they neared home, his lordship had instructed the chauffeur to take him not to the house but to the kennel. _

_"The kennel, milord?" Branson had asked. _

_"Yes," his lordship had replied, his tone carefully neutral. "Pharaoh is being put down today." _

_When they arrived at the kennel, Lord Grantham had told the chauffeur to leave the car and come with him; Branson had no idea why. Later, as the two men sat on the straw covered ground with the dying animal between them, both of them stroking its heavily grayed golden coat as the chemicals that had been injected into the dog did their work, Branson thought perhaps it was so the older man would not have to bear the grief of it alone. _

_In fact, his lordship __**sounded **__completely untroubled, the cultured voice explaining the necessity of the thing, explaining the proceedings to the chauffeur in a calm voice, even chiding him gently on the need to face the end of things, because Branson's face by this time was streaked with tears the chauffeur had been unable to hold back, though his weeping mercifully made no sound. Branson knew he would be weeks living it down with the kennel workers, if he was __**ever**__ able to do so. The kennel men walked around them, very busy with their work, studiously ignoring the two men and the dying dog on the floor, as if death were nothing to them._

_Branson knew it wasn't nothing. Never mind that the chauffeur had sometimes helped with the "processing" of sheep or pigs on his grandfather's farm; it didn't matter that he had killed chickens himself for the pot. This was his lordship's __**pet**__ expiring between them, and he knew Lord Grantham himself must have given the kennel men the order to do it, because the knowledge, the pain, and the guilt of having given that order was plain to read in the older man's eyes: a look that said he had betrayed the dog by ordering its death, no matter how necessary an end death might be to every life, no matter what he was saying to Branson at this very moment to justify it._

_When the dog was dead, Lord Grantham had led the chauffeur outside, and asked him if he were all right. Branson just stared at his employer, then tried to wipe his eyes with fingers still covered by black leather driving gloves. He couldn't speak. _

_Lord Grantham sighed at this obvious weakness, but pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to the boy, then when Branson had wiped away his tears, pulled out a silver flask and made him take a drink from it. When the younger man had done so, Lord Grantham took a pull off the flask himself, screwed the cap back on, put it away, and said again, "Are you all right, Branson?" _

_The smoky, heavy, bitter taste of Scotch whisky was still in the chauffeur's mouth when he replied, breathlessly, "Yes, milord."_

* * *

"Tom," Mary repeated. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, milady."

"_Mary_," Mary reminded him.

"Mary," he agreed, then sighed. "I've been better."


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:** This chapter starts immediately after the end of chapter 3.

**Disclaimer:** I'm not even a custodian, my dears, let alone an owner. These characters and their settings are the work of others. I hope I do not offend with my homage.

* * *

Take Thursday, for example.

Tom had been so _happy _when Mrs. Hughes told him he was 'very welcome' to join them in the servants' hall for supper, despite the fact that he was well aware that since he was the agent, she could not really refuse permission. She had made it abundantly clear that she respected the fact that their relative positions had altered materially both in his initial transition from chauffeur to 'family' then from family to 'agent.'

In Tom's humble opinion the single greatest result of being made the agent was that it meant he no longer had to hear Mr. Carson address him as 'sir' in that hateful way… though God knew he was a long way from having re-earned the butler's respect, if such a goal could _ever _be achieved.

Then, at that self-same supper in the servants' hall, Mr. Carson had volunteered to watch the house, with the result that Tom was free to accompany the others to the fair in Thirsk. (The agent was not capable of believing that enabling Tom to go to the fair was the _reason _for the offer… that was _not _possible, the butler must have some other reason for not wanting to go…)

Whatever the reason, it had given Branson hope for a reconciliation, such as he had not had for many months. Especially in the last few days, enduring the exquisite torture of dining in solitary state served with punctilious courtesy by the disapproving butler… Branson asked himself why he hadn't asked for dinner to be brought to him in the library on a tray. But he knew the reason: he was lonely, and the punishment-like company of his former friend and mentor was a comfort, even if a most uncomfortable comfort. But that night… had been like the old days. And, except for Thomas Barrow getting hurt, he couldn't pretend he hadn't had a wonderful time at the fair.

He thought of Sybil singing, _"For I want to got to Widecombe Fair—" _He quashed the thought immediately.

He thought instead of Mrs. Hughes saying, "May I speak to you as I would have in the old days?"

_'God, __**please **__speak to me as you would have in the old days… _someone_… instead of as though I were a pariah.'_

In a way, he wished he had liked his job as chauffeur less, so that the adjustment would be less painful. Though that was crazy. Why wish to have been unhappy in the past?

And now… he felt badly about what had happened to Edna. He supposed he _had _encouraged her… but she had asked him to do the very thing he wanted to do most anyway, what Mrs. Crawley had suggested: reestablish a place for himself in the servants' hall… was that so wrong? He was as much a servant of the Crawleys now as he had been on May 28th, 1913. More even, for now they were his 'family' and the debt he owed them could never be considered paid in full.

_'You have a position now, and you're entitled to use it." _Mrs. Crawley had said_. _Please let that be true.

And Mrs. Hughes:_ 'Be your own master, and call your own tune… ' _Branson had an idea Mrs. Hughes would not want to hear the tune he wished to call.

And what about the housekeeper's earlier advice?_ 'Be careful, my lad, or you'll end up with no job and a broken heart.' _He wondered what she thought of the use to which he'd put _that _bit of friendly counsel… Though as it happened, he _did _have the broken heart, to go with the more difficult job of agent…

These reflections were not going to help Mary.

When Tom's grandfather died, the local priest Father Giolla Chríst had allowed the mná caointe to keen for him. When asked why he allowed the forbidden practice, the priest said the bible was filled with people wearing sackcloth, covering themselves in ashes, and lamenting the passing of the dead with loud wailing, and if it was good enough for the Patriarchs, it should be good enough to show respect to a patriarch. '_Amen,'_ Tom thought.

When Sybil died, Tom would certainly have poured ashes over his head had it been permitted, and he would still be wearing sackcloth to this very day, this very hour.

* * *

"How did you manage so well after Sybil died?" Mary asked now.

He was so useless. "I haven't," he admitted. "I didn't. You and Matthew… " helped me, he wanted to say, but was too worthless even to say that.

"It's all right," Mary told her brother-in-law comfortingly. "Come back downstairs now. We'll look in on the children, then we could all use some sleep."

"Milady," Anna said, worried that Mr. Branson would need or want to remain behind.

Tom nodded to the ladies maid to show his willingness to accompany them downstairs.

"Everything will look better in the morning," Lady Mary said, quoting her mother.

Tom and Anna both hoped she was right.


End file.
